The key here is to recognize and leverage the individuals' proclivities with the proclivities and innovation goals of the group and ultimately the business. Promoting clear communication with all pertinent stakeholders is extremely (!!!) important in order to maintain understanding of the innovation effort across the cultural, technical, geographic, business, etc. boundaries between all participating stakeholders.



People organize things to meet their needs and desires - It's in our nature.

A group is more efficient in achieve goals when they are organized (all rowing in the same direction) and appropriately directed toward those goals (incentives for rowing in the same direction) - this is called Directed Organization.

Describing a directed organization in detail is difficult to do in general as all organizations are not alike. Therefore, the intent here is to only outline some of the distinctive issues that are important for creating and managing such an organization.

A directed organization is basically a team of cooperating people where:

• Goals are established
• Incentives are afforded
• A plan supports reaching the goals and maintaining the incentives
• The plan is sanctioned 'from above' with authorization and funding
• Critical and fundamental communication is maintained between all stakeholders

Thus, a group of people with Kelley's innovation "faces" who are keeping an eye on Drucker's "seven sources" of unique change and who are teamed in an organization that is directed to create value from/around unique changes is a group that has excellent innovation potential, since innovation potential (IP) is what eventually creates intellectual property (IP).

Three things to always keep in mind, however, are:

• Innovation potential does not necessarily mean success, as the market is the final arbiter of success for a product, innovative or not.
• Management style (from authoritarian to egalitarian) does not seem to make much difference when pursuing innovative goals if the organization is directed properly.
• Timing is mostly unknown when chasing innovation because it's not very predictable as to when unique changes occur, when they are perceived or how they fit within the group's structure (goals, support system, business strategy, etc.). So, it's critical when a unique change is recognized, analyzed and deemed to have potential for value creation that it should be leveraged (with support) as quickly as possible.

Now then, how is a group directed (structured and managed) so that it allows innovation to surface and prosper? Since there is so much written about this, we'll not attempt to repeat (see list of some references throughout and at end of this article). However, the following salient points need to be kept in mind when chasing innovation: